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We Australians, in common with everyone else on this planet, live in a very scary world. The survival of the human race is at risk with the threat of Russian/American nuclear war, with the threat of pollution, overpopulation, energy depletion and the risks of nucleology. We are at risk because of the problems created by the dependence of the world economy on continuous economic growth in both the capitalist and communist worlds. Associated with the problems created by economic growth are the ones mentioned above, as well as the base materialism and consumerism which Australia’s transformation from a sheep­walk into a quarry brings, together with it large scale, permanent unemployment. Especially for school leavers. These are what might be termed, the materials problems. ... (read more)

Maydays by David Rowbotham

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August 1980, no. 23

It is five years since Rowbotham’s Selected Poems, one of that extraordinary number of summing-up volumes that has been, perhaps, last decade’s most telling and characteristic factor. The need to gauge one’s own work (and focus) from some working perspective has always been the basis of a living poet’s Selected Poems. But this decade’s perspective makers have, almost without exception, shared an additional, if implied, purpose: their selections point to a stocktaking rather than a summarising intention.

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Papua New Guinea: A Political History by James Griffin, Hank Nelson, and Firth Stewart

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June 1980, no. 21
In 1606, Prado abducted fourteen Mailu children to Madrid, where they were baptized. The islanders, we read in Papua New Guinea: A Political History: ... (read more)

Until recently I had found that the most useful book on the history of shipping in the Australian area was the two-volume work Pageant of the Pacific by Captain F. Rhodes, published in 1936. During the last few years we have had several books devoted to single companies, such as the E. & A. Line, the AUSN, Adelaide Steamship, and smaller companies, each of which showed the difficulty of condensing a lot of ships histories into one volume. To deal with all the coastal companies, some of which extended overseas, in one volume, requires ruthless editing and carries the danger of the story being stripped of its flesh, to leave us with the dry bare bones. Two years ago there appeared the very complete work by Dr John Bach, A Maritime History of Australia in nearly 500 pages. The work under review is briefer and easier to read, being about 330 pages with 115 photographs and line drawings. A strange omission in both these books is that their bibliographies give no mention to Rhodes’ great work.

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Sir Samuel Griffith was chief justice of the High Court of Australia for sixteen years, from October 1903 to October 1919; but he had effectively retired in July 1919. Sir John Latham was chief justice for sixteen and a half years, from October 1935 to April 1952; but he had effectively retired in May 1951. Thus, Sir Garfield Barwick, who last month completed his sixteenth year as chief justice, has already established a record for active service in the position; if he remains in office until 24 October this year, he will have broken even Lathams formal record.

The holder of such a record term of office as chief justice would, on that ground alone, be assured of a unique place in Australian legal history; but in Barwick’s case, the years as chief justice are only a climax – perhaps even an anti-climax – to an extraordinary career.

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The Sources of Hope edited by Ross Fizgerald

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June 1980, no. 21

In his introduction to this collection of essays the editor, Ross Fitzgerald, remarks: ‘Our age is not exactly brimming over with positive affirmation and joyful anticipation.’ One wonders whether or not there has ever been a period of human history which such an assertion would accurately describe, let alone whether this would be a particular occasion for celebration. After all what gives an aggressive advocate of military solutions to current political problems a certain degree of hope may well cause the pacificist the deepest despair. There is no unity and certainly no necessary common goal to what gives diverse groups and individuals their respective sources of hope and pessimism.

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Walking the Line by Rae Desmond Jones & Summer Ends Now by John Emery

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June 1980, no. 21

Rae Desmond Jones has joined the growing band of poets now working in the more expansive medium of prose diction (thereby possibly expanding their readership as well). Others that come to mind are David Malouf, Roger McDonald, and Rodney Hall.

At just 74 pages, Rae Desmond Jones’s first story collection gives the impression of being a slim volume. The contents page lists only ten stories. Yet this impression is deceptive. There are actually twelve stories (inexplicably, two aren’t listed in the contents), and the usual typography concentrates the prose, emphasizing its density and the sense of menace underlying the narratives.

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Dear Mr McLaren

Thank you for your letter. We shall certainly reciprocate in the matter of complimentary copies and we’re also interested in exchange advertising. I look forward to seeing your next issue and would appreciate receiving a copy by air mail if your circulation mechanism is as slow as ours tends to be.

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This book came out last November four months after David Campbell died, and represents (say the publishers) ‘the very last of his poems’.

Although of late I’ve read just about everything he published, there’s no space here to sum up his work. Besides, Geoff Page (ABR October 1979) has already taken a keenly perceptive look at the past ten years development and has also foreshadowed my comments on this last collection. Quite rightly he points to those poets (Lowell, Hughes, Zbigniew Herbert, Vasko Popa), in whom Campbell found reminders of ‘some­thing he had long had to do’. Their poems, then, were like good parents, teaching their children not to imitate them but to assume their own identities. In The Man in the Honeysuckle, I especially note the influence of Popa: like him, Campbell in many poems cleans away all punctuation and yet the syntax sings clearly, so that we get a new version of the limpid poem we have always expected from Campbell.

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Humphrey McQueen’s new book claims to give an adequate account of the emergence if not the development of modernist paining in Australia up to 1944. In particular he claims to do two things the previous writers in this area have not done or have done inadequately.

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